The Homeric Hymns A New Prose translation and Essays, Literary and Mythological

Page: 12

“The wandering waters knew her, the winds and the
viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue streams of the bays.”

But the charm of Aphrodite is Greek. Even without foreign influence,
Greek polytheism would have developed a Goddess of Love, as did the
polytheism of the North (Frigga) and p. 44of
the Aztecs. The rites of Adonis, the vernal year, are, even in
the name of the hero, Oriental. “The name Adonis is the
Phœnician Adon, ‘Lord.’” {44}
“The decay and revival of vegetation” inspires the Adonis
rite, which is un-Homeric; and was superfluous, where the descent and
return of Persephone typified the same class of ideas. To whatever
extent contaminated by Phœnician influence, Aphrodite in Homer
is purely Greek, in grace and happy humanity.

The origins of Aphrodite, unlike the origins of Apollo, cannot be
found in a state of low savagery. She is a departmental Goddess,
and as such, as ruling a province of human passion, she belongs to a
late development of religion. To Christianity she was a scandal,
one of the scandals which are absent from the most primitive of surviving
creeds. Polytheism, as if of set purpose, puts every conceivable
aspect of life, good or bad, under divine sanction. This is much
less the case p. 45in the
religion of the very backward races. We do not know historically,
what the germs of religion were; if we look at the most archaic examples,
for instance in Australia or the Andaman Islands, we find neither sacrifice
nor departmental deities.

Religion there is mainly a belief in a primal Being, not necessarily
conceived as spiritual, but rather as an undying magnified Man, of indefinitely
extensive powers. He dwells above “the vaulted sky beyond
which lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful Being, who
is Bunjil, Baiame, or Daramulun in different tribal languages, but who
in all is known by a name the equivalent of the only one used by the
Kurnai, which is Mungan-ngaur, or ‘Our Father.’” {45}
This Father is conceived of in some places as “a very great old
man with a long beard,” enthroned on, or growing into, a crystal
throne. Often he is served by a son or sons (Apollo, Hermes),
frequently regarded as spiritually begotten; elsewhere, looked on as
the son of the wife p. 46of
the deity, and as father of the tribe. {46a}
Scandals connected with fatherhood, amorous intrigues so abundant in
Greek mythology, are usually not reported among the lowest races.
In one known case, the deity, Pundjel or Bunjil, takes the wives of
Karween, who is changed into a crane. {46b}
This is one of the many savage ætiological myths which account
for the peculiarities of animals as a result of metamorphosis, in the
manner of Ovid. It has been connected with the legend of Bunjil,
who is thus envisaged, not as “Our Father” beyond the vault
of heaven, who still inspires poets, {46c}
but as a wandering, shape-shifting medicine-man. Zeus, the Heavenly
Father, of course appears times without number in the same contradictory
aspect.